嫡

Mandarin · pinyin dí

Meanings

  1. (bound form) of or by the wife, as opposed to a concubine (contrasted with 庶 shù)
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Characters in this entry

嫡
dí · legal wife, child of legal wife
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2 · di2

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1character link38same-tone records2source references
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Read this spelling in Classical texts

Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

dik1

Cantonese word readings for 嫡. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

character

  1. primary wife; legal wife
  2. primary wife; legal wife — of or by the legal wife
  3. (abbreviation, alt-of) short for 嫡子 (dízǐ, “son of one's legal wife”)
  4. of lineal descent; closely related
  5. orthodox; authentic; legitimate

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack